By Maggie Galehouse |
September 13, 2009

Between 1998 and 2000, author Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor, traveled together to sacred sites in Greece and France.

At the time, Kidd, who found huge success with her 2002 novel, The Secret Life of Bees,was entering menopause and struggling to make sense of this new phase in her life. Taylor, recently graduated from college, was battling depression and uncertainty about her future.

Traveling with Pomegranates,the just-released book they wrote together, narrates these physical and emotional journeys. The Chronicle caught up with Kidd, 61, and Taylor, 33, at the beginning of their national book tour. They'll be in Houston on Monday to sign and discuss the new book.

Questions for Sue Monk Kidd

Q: InTraveling with Pomegranates, you record all your dreams in a journal. Why?

A: I've always been a journal-keeper. I've always tried to write about how I'm experiencing life, and my feelings and thoughts. Then gradually it occurred to me that we spend a great deal of life asleep and that dreams are little narratives, little stories. I thought, who's choreographing this stuff? Then I began to read C.G. Jung, and I became convinced that there was meaning in all of this, even though it could be difficult to decipher. Dreams serve some impulse toward wholeness in the psyche.

Q: More than once in the new book, you mention that early response to the short story that grew intoThe Secret Life of Beeswas tepid. One critique said the potential for a novel was small. What made you persist with your first novel?

A:Those moments serve you pretty well because you come to terms with certain things about who's to be believed and your own creative vision. You have to ask yourself, will I pursue this? Am I going to take my cues internally or externally?

Q:The title for the book is taken from the myth of another mother/daughter duo, — Demeter, goddess of the harvest, and Persephone. In one version, Persephone is abducted into the underworld and Hecate, an old crone and goddess of the crossroads, breaks the news to Demeter, who's so upset that the crops die. Thanks to Zeus, Persephone returns to Earth, but because she has swallowed pomegranate seeds in the underworld, she must return there for four months every year. In your book, you note that the three women in the myth can be read as three parts or phases of the same woman. How are you feeling about your place on this continuum?

A: The last 10 years have been a deepening of what I experienced on the trip. It does seem to me that we come to a moment when there is a crossing-over, when we are looking for a portal into that older womanhood. Usually we write about the physical aspects of menopause. About beauty and health and appearance. Which is important. But I felt like there was some transition the soul needed to make, and I wanted to understand how to navigate that. ... The mother-daughter experience is so profound and intense. Mothers often see daughters, unconsciously, as appendages of themselves. But daughters leave. So you might experience your own young womanhood leaving through your daughter.

Questions for Ann Kidd Taylor

Q:During the writing ofTraveling with Pomegranates, did you and your mother edit each other's chapters?

A:That was the challenge of the book. How to make the alternating chapters rather seamless. This worked well because we live a whole 15 minutes away from each other in South Carolina. We could get together when we needed to, swap chapters and talk about them. There was a great deal of discussion and brainstorming. And of course, the chapters had to be rewritten and rewritten.

Q:Your mother has been on book tours before, but this is your first. How do you feel?

A:There's a part of me that just cannot even believe that this book is a book. That it's in bookstores and that we wrote all of it.

Q:You write movingly about your own depression in the book. Early on, you were getting over a breakup with a college boyfriend. Later, you were unmoored by a rejection from a graduate program in ancient history. Were you anxious about putting such personal experiences in a book that millions of people might read?

A:I never felt when I was writing that I was writing something I shouldn't be telling. I just wanted my story to be authentic. This will sound odd, but part of me was more comfortablewritingabout it.

Q: InTraveling with Pomegranates, Athena emerges as an important figure for you. Whatdoes she represent?

A: She represents that sense of belonging to yourself, that part of yourself that's untouchable. She was so many things. Goddess of wisdom and creativity. A warrior. She became a way for me to hold on to myself.